esetting sins."

Nathaniel sprang up, when he heard the door shut, with a distracted idea
of escape, now that his jailers were away, and felt an icy stirring in the
roots of his hair at the realization that his misery lay within, that the
walls of his own flesh and blood shut it inexorably into his heart
forever. He threw open the window and leaned out.

The old negress came out of the woods at the other end of the street, her
turban gleaming red. She moved in a cautious silence past the
meeting-house, but when she came opposite the minister's house, thinking
herself alone, she burst into a gay, rapid song, the words of which she so
mutilated in her barbarous accent that only a final "Oh, Molly-oh!" could
be distinguished. She carried an herb-basket on her arm now, into which,
from time to time, she looked with great satisfaction.

Nathaniel ran down the stairs and out of the door calling. She paused,
startled. "How can you sing and laugh and walk so lightly?" he cried out.

She cocked her head on one side with her turtle-like motion. "Why should
she not sing?" she asked in her thick, sweet voice. She had never learned
the difference between the pronouns. "She's be'n gatherin' yarbs in the
wood, an' th' sun is warm," she blinked at it rapidly, "an' the winter it
is pas', Marse Natty, no mo' winter!"

Nathaniel came close up to her, laying his thin fingers on her fat, black
arm. His voice quivered. "But they say if you love those things and if
they make you glad you are damned to everlasting brimstone fire. Tell me
how you dare to laugh, so that I will dare too."

The old woman laughed, opening her mouth so widely that the red lining to
her throat showed moistly, and all her fat shook on her bones. "Lord love
ye, chile, dat's white folks' talk. Dat don't scare a old black woman!"
She shifted her basket to the other arm and prepared to go on. "You're
bleeged to be keerful 'bout losin' yo' soul. Black folks ain't got no
souls, bless de Lord! When _dey_ dies dey _dies_!"

She shuffled along, laughing, and began to sing again. Nathaniel looked
after her with burning eyes. After she had disappeared between the tree
trunks of the forest, the breeze bore back to him a last joyous whoop of
"_Oh_, Molly-oh!" He burst into sobs, and shivering, made his way back
into his father's darkening, empty house.

III

At the breakfast table the next morning his father looked at him
neutrally. "This day you shall go to salt